Hey guys, any help you can provide me with this problem would be greatly appreciated. Over the course of today, my player seems to have taken a major turn for the worse. First I'll just tell you the current symptoms:

1) The display is fairly distorted. By distored, I mean the display image is visibly flickering, and there is a duplicate of the normal display image vertically offset about 2/3 the way down the display (only the top of the duplicate is visible).

2) The player now turns itself off right after booting (even the standby LED turns off). It won't turn on or respond to the front panel after booting, but it does still respond to the ethernet interface (Emplode sees it and is able to apply upgrades even when in this state).

After trying a number of things, I have only been able to get the EMPEG to boot up and play music once since this happened, and that was right after a software upgrade. I tried the upgrade again, but the results weren't repeatable.....

Here's the sequence of events that led up to this condition:

This morning, I used my car to run some errands and the EMPEG was working great like usual. It has been docked in the car for over a week since I haven't had any new music to sync and was happy with the rev of Hijack I was using.

I went home and left the car parked for a few hours.... went back out to the car to run to the store. I start up the car, and the EMPEG goes through the regular boot sequence and starts playing. Everything seems fine, except I have no audio output at all.... amp is on, but silence from the EMPEG. I try different tracks, adjust the volume, still no audio.

I reseat the player to see if maybe something was not seated correctly.

This time, while it is rebooting the display looks distorted.... and the player locks up before completing the boot process (I think it said 'starting server' or something similar).

I reseat it again, and it fully boots... but as soon as the boot cycle is complete the display turns off (and the standby LED is not flashing). No audio either... I try to blindy navigate the menu buttons to see if maybe it is working sans display, but cannot get any sound out of it or any feedback from the display or LED.

I try cycling the ignition and reseating it a few more times, same results... it boots and then seems to shut off.

I bring it inside, and connect to hyperterminal, the results are attached. And I learn that it behaves the same way on AC power.

Then, I reload 1.03 consumer, and the player seemed to work again on the first reboot (the corrupted display problem remains, but I could get music out of it, navigate the menus, etc). However, subsequent attempts to reboot after this result in the original problem (player shuts itself off, no standby LED).

Any ideas? Is my player toast? I will probably contact support as well, but since my warranty expired about 4 months ago I don't expect they will be able to do much. I have a feeling something important on the mainboard may have died. Luckily I bought a shelf spare when RioCar had their clearance, but I wasn't planning on having to put it into primary duty so soon.

I had a problem in the past where the player would restart itself every 1-3 hours. I posted the serial output on this forum, and got a response from mlord that indicated my player was "running out of memory, either due to a leak in the player, or just bad memory management fragmentation) by the player. " Perhaps that was an early warning sign of some sort.... especially since no one else responded to that thread with the same problem?

Since I posted that rebooting problem, I haven't experienced it again. But I attributed that to the fact that I really haven't driven the car more than an hour at a time since then... it usually occurs once every 1-3 hours of continuous operation.

Contact [email protected] right away so they can help you diagnose the problem.

Your description sounds similar to another recent one where the cause was a blown fuse on the motherboard in the circuitry that powers the display board.

As far as I know, the cause of that blown fuse is not yet determined.

Tony, I am glad to hear that there is at least some hope. I just emailed support with the same problem description I posted here. We shall see what happens.

Thanks - Mike.

The display problems you are having match exactly what my unit did after I blew one of the fuses near the display connector on the main board (from plugging the display connector in slightly wrong, oops).

Replaced the fuse, all is well.

There are three small white rectangular fuses around near where the display cable connects onto the main board. The blown one was the one closest to the docking connector. One can check it with an ohm-metre without much fuss.

-ml

Right, exactly. In Mark's case, the fuse was blown because the display connector was plugged in wrong.

There was another case (this is the second one reported so far) where someone reported the fuse had blown, but they had not messed with the display connector, it simply started happening after they started their car one day.

The cause of the blown fuse in the "starting the car" case hasn't been explained yet.

Okay, I'll check that out.

In my case, this particlar unit has never even been opened up (it was a warranty replacement for my original player). The warranty seal is even still intact, but I guess I'll break it and check these fuses since my player is out of warranty anyway.

And as you mentioned, it did seem to be related to starting the car. One thing of note is that I have a 91 Honda and the switched power line for the radio behaves a little differently than some cars I have owned in the past:

12V present: Acc position, Ignition position
No voltage present: Ignition off, and during starting

So when you start the start the car, you have at two choices:

1. Turn the key to ACC or IGN, and let the player boot, and then start the car once it has quit accessing the hard drive, etc. On starting, the player is briefly killed, and it comes right back after the car starts without rebooting but does briefly display the low battery warning.

2. Turn the key directly from off to start.... the player doesn't start booting until after the engine is running, although in theory it received a very quick pulse as the key passed through the ACC and IGN positions to reach the Start position.

In the case when mine died, I had done sequence 2. But I usually do sequence 1 if I am not in a hurry. I don't like doing either though.... but I have come to accept it. Maybe this has something to with the problem? On the other hand, I am sure many people have these in cars whose switched 12V radio power lines that behave in the same way... and only 2 cases of this problem so far...

If did turn out to be a suspected problem, I could always fix this in a couple of ways (keep the ignition line high during starting). But then, I have to wonder if the battery voltage drop on the sense and main power inputs during starting wouldn't be at least an equal magnitude problem for the player anyway.....

Of the three fuses, only one is blown and it sounds like the same one that went out on your player (the one nearest the docking connector). This looks like it will be fun to replace as it sits between the display connector and the relatively large ethernet IC .

Any idea of the specs for this fuse? All three of mine just say 'FH' on them. I was just looking around online and came across many variations that come in the same form factor (fast acting, slo-blo, very slo-blo, plus a wide range of current ratings).

Thanks!

From an older thread:

>The fuses are 1A 1206 surface-mount ones.

If you cannot find surface mount, then 1A axial "pico Fuses"
can also be used -- the solder pads are just large enough.

-ml

"Fast-Acting" fuses are what you want.

-ml

Excellent... thank you!

Looks like I found the exact replacement part online.... guess I will get a few in case this happens again.

If anyone is interested, I'll document the replacement process with text and pictures incase it happens to anyone else in the future......

I managed to replace the fuse on mine (which was the other one that failed on starting the car one day) and it seemed to work happily for the few hours before I got on a plane to come across to the other side of the country... I haven't had much more chance to test it than that though and was going to put a full report in once I had had it working for a bit longer...

Since being away I have been told by the people that I left my car with that the car has had some electrical problems with the ignition module (which will have to be replaced) so I feel that may have been what caused mine to fault... Might be worthwhile checking the electrics on your car out...?

Out of interest my empeg was serial number 080000420 (from memory that is as it is on the other side of the country at present)

Cheers

Kim

PS Sorry I didn't get around to documenting my repairs, but there were too many things I had to get done before getting my flight...

I have a question... To those whose internal fuses blew without provocation:

Are both of your power wires fused before they enter the sled? Both the constant power and the ignition-switched power? Or did you leave a fuse off of them somewhere and that's why the internal fuse blew when a spike hit the line?

Well, I replaced my fuse and everything seems to be right in the world again . I made a quick webpage that highlights the fuse replacement in the event that anyone else ever experiences this.

http://www.mrmunsell.com/EMPEG/Fuse_Replacement/fuse_replacement.html

Tony: Sorry for the late reply, I have been out of town. In answer to your question, I did maintain the inline fuse that comes in the EMPEG wire harness (this is the 3 Amp inline fuse in the main power line). I also have the factory fuses which protect both the switched and constant power lines.... so the main line is actually double fused. I have removed the accessories that used to share these fuses with the radio (lighter, etc), so I replaced the factory fuses with ones of lower current ratings to be safe (same rating as the EMPEG supplied fuse).

With all that said however, the EMPEG-supplied inline fuse has a 3 Amp rating (in my case anyway) while the mainboard fuse is a fast-acting 1 Amp fuse. So I would imagine that whatever caused this would always blow the mainboard fuse first due to it's much lower rating.

Kimbotha: My player is serial number 090001020... doesn't seem to be any close correlation there.

I can't say with 100% confidence that there is nothing wrong with my car's electrical system, but I am pretty certain that everything is within specification. There are definately no symptoms of any problems (besides the EMPEG problem of course). The alternator/regulator and battery are relatively new. But I guess it couldn't hurt to check into it.

I have other sensitive electrical components in the car that have not suffered the same fate. One of these components is a Crimestopper alarm system. While the unit has some nice features, my experience with these alarms in the past is that their voltage regulation circuitry has room for improvement . In a previous car, a battery that failed while driving (lost a cell) killed a very similar Crimestopper alarm. My best guess was that the output of the electrical system was not too clean without a functional battery to filter it, and the alarm wasn't able to adequately filter this resulting in the demise of important ICs within the alarm. I had other electronics in the car that survived the incident with no problems (mostly audio stuff... amps, CD player, audio control EQL, etc).

The EMPEG on the other hand, seems to have a pretty well built power supply... I would be extremely surprised if an electrical problem in the car killed the EMPEG before the alarm... but you never know.

Thanks,

Mike

There are three 1A fuses which protect various parts of the circuit. The main internal fuse is in fact an auto-resetting device - when it blows it makes a nasty smell but resets itself within a few minutes.

If an internal permanent fuse blows then the reason - 99% of the time - is that something inside the player has been screwed with (usually the display connector).

Rob

I'm curious, why does it make a nasty smell?

Calvin

Damn, that is an excellent page.

Linking from the FAQ now. URL is more or less permanent?

Because it gets very hot (by design).

Rob

Hey, here's a thought!

If one has to replace that commonly-blowing display board fuse, is it possible to replace it with an auto-resetting fuse?

Thank you . And yes, that URL is pretty much permanent.

Rob: Any ideas on what may cause this particular fuse to blow the other 1% of the time? Hopefully not an early warning that my display board is going to die? Up until I replaced this fuse, the warranty seal on this player hadn't even been broken yet.

Thanks!

I don't think it's an early warning (the PSU in the mk2 display board is pretty robust - the mk1 did have problems in this area with the switch-mode 60v PSU eating itself), but it's very hard to tell. Replace the fuse with another the same rating and see how long it lasts, I suppose...

Hugo

Dragging up an old thread here, but it's recently become relevant to me.

Is it harmful to continue running the player with a blown display fuse?

According to my multimeter, my fuse is blown (same one as shown on mrmunsell's excellent page). (Long story - see below). But music still plays and everything mostly works, apart from the display going dim when the button LEDs are turned up, and the standby LED coming on with the display (I've configured Hijack to turn it off during standby).

Also, is there anyone nearby (Cambridge area) who can help replace the fuse? Michael Davey did a great job on my power socket last year, but I haven't seen him post here in a long time...


Long story: to avoid damaging my player, I foolishly entrusted the button LED install to a local electronics service company. Turns out they plugged the display cable in off-by-one - and also the drive cable! Testament to the player's robustness that there's no apparent damage apart from the fuse! Still, it took them three weeks to decide they wouldn't fix it and instead return it to me - with the headers still misaligned as evidence of their incompetence! Neat soldering job, though.

I had a Fuse Blow when the People at the local Stereo shop overloaded the AUX output from the empeg by trying to power a DEQ off of it.

I can. PM is your friend.

You're obviously in better hands here dealing with Rob Schofield but it strikes me that since the repair company caused the fuse to blow, and you are happy with their soldering work, why not ask them to replace the fuse FOC?

The thing is, they did a "pretty neat" soldering job and that's worth a lot IMO.

Other than the crap 3-weeks they took to "own up", they really just fell down on expecting IDC header connections being "foolproof" - they usually are and the empeg is the exception to the rule here as far as most 'normal' domestic servicing work is concerned.

I'm not trying to make excuses for their handling of all this - it sounds like they behaved quite badly and they certainly made a major schoolboy error in not paying attention to the IDC header connectors before removing them. We don't know what their normal line of work is but I bet it involves 'keyed' IDC headers.

I don't have particularly good vibes about this company either but, to sum up, their soldering is good and if they can replace a fuse then the car player in question is almost certainly up and running once more.

Edit: After re-reading all of this, perhaps it really should go straight to Rob Schofield. After all, if something else goes wrong with this 'other' repairer it's gonna be a whole other story by the time Rob gets to see it.

Well, to close this story at last: I had a lengthy email exchange with Rob Schofield in which he agreed to send me the fuse, and also some screws for the drive tray mounts and a pair of handle springs. Then it emerged we were just five minutes apart, so he did all the fitting for me.

He's done a fantastic job, and in passing cured the sticky buttons which were being a nuisance, and now my player is as good as new (well, better, due to the illuminated LEDS that started the whole saga).

A public "thank you" to Rob, and a strong recommendation!

Hello,

I repaired the knob and dissambled the whole display... to make it short. I missaligned the display unit connector by one. Now the screen is distorted.
I seem to have created the same scenario here, however I am unable to locate and identify the fuse. And the link with the walkthrough isn't available anymore.

Could anyone help? I am sort of desperate ;-)

Cheers
KeN

When I go to the FAQ and follow the link to the walkthrough, I get results. The walkthrough is coming from the wayback machine, so it's slow, but it works for me.

PDF copy attached, for the archives.

Love you guys!!!
A Big, sincere thank you!

Successfully repaired the player this weekend. I am sooo happy, this board rocks!